A Taste of Colorado in Denver, Labor Day Weekend

I’ve just received my copy of my friend Ann Martin’s new book, The Art of Quilling Paper Jewelry. She’s one of the most talented paper artists (and bloggers) I know. Give her new book a peek to see what the cool kids are reading!

Earlier this year I posted a blog about Civic Center EATS here in Denver, a gathering of food trucks in Civic Center Park downtown in front of the Capitol building. Little did I know that, every Labor Day weekend, A Taste of Colorado puts EATS to shame! It’s like vendor-and-food-truck-o-rama-with-your-gramma on steroids!

My husband and I caught the train downtown on the Friday of Labor Day weekend. We thought we’d get a jump on the festivities since this monster event attracts over half a million visitors over four days!

Here are some of the street scenes we were met with:

Aside from the intense sunshine and the coolness of the shade, not to mention the Capitol dome presiding over all of it, here are some of the reminders I saw that I’m definitely in Colorado:

Admission for A Taste of Colorado is free, then you buy tickets at strategically-placed booths. You use the tickets to pay for rides, beer and food, though you get a free Coors for every 15 tickets you buy on Friday – file that under ‘Reminders I’m in Colorado’, too! There was such a variety of food there – it was so hard to decide what to try. Plus all the cooking made great photos:

We finally decided on the pulled wild-boar sandwich with parmesan-truffle fries from the Barbed Wire Reef booth. It was so good we are going to check out their brick-and-mortar downtown soon. Can you believe I asked a complete stranger if I could take a picture of her funnel cake because I was too full for dessert? Yeah, I do, too!

I really loved this event, and I’m sure that it was an entirely different scene after dark, too. They had rather big names on the stages like Rick Springfield, Shiela E and 38 Special. One of the stages was designated for chefs and food-related shows and even ice-cream-eating contests! The rides weren’t quite set up when we were there, but they were working on it. I imagine the lights against the night sky and the Capitol would be something!

A Taste of Colorado is definitely on my calendar for future years, but I needed just a taste this time (all puns intended).

Photo for No Apparent Reason: